Dan Hardy Wants Nate Marquardt to Retake “Literacy Test”

Dan Hardy has never been one to shy away from confrontation – physical or otherwise – and that’s why “The Outlaw” took to his blog to respond to the backlash he’s received for his comments regarding the boring direction mixed martial arts is headed.

“Ultimately, people can agree or disagree with what I wrote, but the facts are on my side,” Hardy wrote on ThisIsNottingham. “The Nick Lentz fight at UFC 118, which was the catalyst for my column, was the only UFC Prelim fight to ever lose TV viewers. That hurt the pay-per-view buy rate, it hurt Andre Winner’s career, it hurt lightweight Joe Lauzon – who had an amazing performance immediately after Lentz’s effort, which fewer people witnessed because of Lentz – and it hurt the sport as a whole.

“No one watching that Lentz fight was entertained, no one turned to their buddy and screamed ‘Damn! This fight is so awesome! He’s holding the hell out of him!’ I would never presume to speak for the UFC, but I can’t see Lentz getting any more prime time opportunities anytime soon.”

If that was the point the Brit was trying to make, something certainly got lost in translation by the time the message made its way across the pond.

“One guy who struggled to keep up with the points I made was UFC middleweight and charisma donor Nate Marquardt, who always seems to have something to say about me, for no other reason than I once competed against one of his friends,” Hardy added. “Sadly, we can now add ‘literacy test’ to the types of tests Nate has failed, because he either misread the whole thing or – like writers from AOL and Yahoo did – just read the first paragraph or two and had to stop because reading gives him a headache.”

Marquardt was quite critical of the slugger’s comments, particularly since they appeared to be directed at his homie and welterweight king Georges St-Pierre. Although St-Pierre masterfully executed his grounded game plan against him at UFC 111, Hardy claims the lopsided unanimous decision loss isn’t what ignited this debate.

“This isn’t about my fight with GSP either. He beat me fair and square,” Hardy admitted. “I would have liked him to have tried to do more damage but that’s only so he would have given me more space to get back up. He controlled me well and worked for submissions and nearly got two if you remember.”

Although Hardy was born in England, he lives by the old Latin adage of ‘carpe diem.’ That opportunistic mentality has allowed him to get this far and he certainly isn’t planning on changing anytime soon.

“You have to seize these chances in your career and I am working very hard on giving an explosive performance against Carlos Condit in London on October 16 at UFC 120,” Hardy matter-of-factly stated. “It is another huge chance for me, and, unlike some, I will fight my heart out.”